Overcoming the Past: Nintendo, Sega, and the Nostalgia Trap

GenGAME writes: "Nostalgia is both a blessing and a curse for the games industry. On the one hand, it represents good and memorable content that has stuck with people throughout the years – and that’s a powerful asset for anyone looking to capture hearts and minds. On the other hand, however, relying too much on nostalgia often misses the point of video games: to captivate us with compelling interactive experiences.

It's not nostalgia, it's what worked. Sonic and Mario in 3D had tons of issues. 2D is much more playable. Same can be said for Castlevania. It's not like you're going to see Madden go back to window passing. That would be nostalgia.

Plenty of the 2D revival games have pushed us into new ground, the most obvious being Hard Corps Uprising, but also the Mario games which have combined 2D and 3D elements as well as harnessing the features of new hardware.